AVS and Milkdrop could probably run on a toaster today, I'd guess even WebGL would be enough on a smartphone, laptop or similar device with some kind of GPU.
Meanwhile, YTM costs 13€ a month, doesn't have an equalizer, no cross-device sync despite cloud everything... no nothing. Not even gapless album playback.
Once upon a time, I signed up to Spotify in order to have a good conscience, because I grew old and didn't want to keep collecting audio files...
Then Spotify became worse and worse.
For now YTM seems like a better deal, but I still can't even find a free solution to migrate my playlists.
Basically, everything went to shit. The only advantage is not having to illegaly download new music after browsing Discogs.
The disadvantage is, apart from the odd good recommendation, my interest in discovering new music has vanished.
Even new music found on Discogs.
But why bother saving songs to playlists when it's all transient anyway?
That was my main last straw with Spotify — too many good music disappearing from playlists, and steadily worsening recommendations. With rabbit-holes of totally trash AI-generated "music" in between, that didn't stop unless actively skipping.
And YTMs not gonna end any better, I feel.
Just a reminder that all music is transient. And maybe to seek regaining enthusiasm by playing music myself, or going out.
Streaming really has killed "listening to music" and being excited about it for me, and I don't feel it's purely because of old age.
Going to revive my Mp3 collection soon from a backup and download my ~25 records worth listening since 2012 then from Bandcamp instead.
I feel very similarly... I have YTM mostly because I don't like ads on Youtube and found out creators get more from YT subscribers than from the ads.
I have the UX of the player though... the android TV experience is even worse, it's nearly impossible to use effectively now.
I miss DJs, at least I miss good DJs... there are a few stations locally that I like what the DJs will mix and play, but there's sooo many commercials now. I'd happily pay $10/month for an ad-free DJ run experience. I mean, why the likes of XM, etc don't just have 50-100 DJs actually curate the music for the live experience.
Thinking about that, I was happy about Rinse.fm still existing and a couple of other stations still playing live sets – not that I like everything, but when a DJ hits the spot, it's really satisfying.
Live sets generally are an antidote to this kind of music fatigue for me.
Of course there are other remedies, e.g. timeless albums and live music, I also a deep love for Bach's keyboard music, and some of that proved to me how much context matters for enjoyment.
And ditto about Youtube, it's not a bad offer in itself but the music app really sucks, many parts of Google TV are mediocre, too. In the latter case, I appreciate their effort in that case though (gtv in general), and the p/v I get from that 40€ hdmi+usb stick is not too bad either since i use a cheap chromecast.
That's a thing I still like Google for, at least in my case Chromecast makes it possible to reuse a cheap ~10y old LED tv for purely internet tv, with a functional remote, etc.
It's not new, but Google's TV sticks are pretty decent imo
AVS and Milkdrop could probably run on a toaster today, I'd guess even WebGL would be enough on a smartphone, laptop or similar device with some kind of GPU.
Meanwhile, YTM costs 13€ a month, doesn't have an equalizer, no cross-device sync despite cloud everything... no nothing. Not even gapless album playback.
Once upon a time, I signed up to Spotify in order to have a good conscience, because I grew old and didn't want to keep collecting audio files...
Then Spotify became worse and worse.
For now YTM seems like a better deal, but I still can't even find a free solution to migrate my playlists.
Basically, everything went to shit. The only advantage is not having to illegaly download new music after browsing Discogs.
The disadvantage is, apart from the odd good recommendation, my interest in discovering new music has vanished.
Even new music found on Discogs.
But why bother saving songs to playlists when it's all transient anyway?
That was my main last straw with Spotify — too many good music disappearing from playlists, and steadily worsening recommendations. With rabbit-holes of totally trash AI-generated "music" in between, that didn't stop unless actively skipping.
And YTMs not gonna end any better, I feel.
Just a reminder that all music is transient. And maybe to seek regaining enthusiasm by playing music myself, or going out.
Streaming really has killed "listening to music" and being excited about it for me, and I don't feel it's purely because of old age.
Going to revive my Mp3 collection soon from a backup and download my ~25 records worth listening since 2012 then from Bandcamp instead.